Mountains Of Tartary

In Mountains of Tartary , mountaineering and explorer Eric Shipton describes his climbs and explorations in northern and central Asia, taking the reader places that most would otherwise never go and writing with humour and self-deprecation. During the Second World War, and up until 1951, Shipton worked as consul general in Kunming and Kashgar in China, and as a diplomat in Hungary and Persia. In Mountains of Tartary, he describes his climbs and explorations that take him from the barren steppes of central Asia, to glass-clear lakes and forested slopes. Shipton and his party enjoy varying degrees of hospitality from the local people and occasionally potentially dangerous encounters. The book details the exploits of the climbers, explorers and guides, including a hilarious drunken banquet with government officials. Mountains of Tartary is like a postcard from history – a must-read for any keen climber, walker or explorer.

* This is the fully illustrated edition, annotated with an extensive biography of the author. Évariste Régis Huc, or Abbé Huc, (1813–1860) was a French missionary traveller, famous for his accounts of China, Tartary and Tibet. Since the travels of the Englishman, Thomas Manning, in Tibet (1811–1812), no European had visited Lhasa. Huc stimulated European interest in Central Asia and blazed a trail for Asian studies. This book includes the first part of the Abbé's travels in that region from 1844 to 1856. It leaves stunning pictures of a world few people have ever seen. It is fully illustrated and comes with an interactive table-of-contents for easy browsing.